Great Purge

The Great Purge was a period from 1936 to 1938 that saw the Soviet Union's dictator Joseph Stalin order the execution of as many as 1,200,000 people within the USSR, with 681,692 people being executed by the KGB from 1937 to 1938 and many more dying in gulags or being secretly killed. The purge's goal was to rid the USSR of all political dissidents, Old Bolsheviks, or possible challengers to Stalin's totalitarian rule. Followers of his old enemy Joseph Trotsky, three of the five original Marshals of the Soviet Union, 90% of the Red Army's generals, and all of the admirals of the Soviet Navy were executed in the purge, which was very similar to the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution in 1793-1794.